Continuing Professional Development ent (CPD) is a growing area of interest. If we interpret the term ‘professional’ quite loosely, then we can include not just the traditional regulated professions such as medicine and law under this heading but also include management and similar fields of work.
The requirement to continue to keep up to date has been the starting point for CPD. In medicine, for instance, there are new drugs and procedures appearing all the time. Doctors need to keep on top of this and therefore they need to continue to learn. Indeed the UK Government is proposing that General Practitioners will have to be revalidated every five years in order to maintain their licence to practice. However the emphasis on just knowledge learning has broadened over recent years. Now we find the pressure is for professionals to increase their skills and capabilities to cope with a changing world.
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We see this area as clearly strategic as the best CPD is a process of continuing to learn in one’s professional arena for as long as one is employed in that profession. It cannot be just a short term, quick fix activity. However many professional bodies still see it in the latter terms. This is especially so when CPD means no more than attending some seminars or conferences in the year and ticking off boxes on the form you send to the professional body and then getting the OK for having done your CPD.
This input led mode clearly does not work. We have attended professional conferences and observed some individuals either sitting at the back reading newspapers or just not turning up for sessions (they were too busy on the golf course). The reason for this behaviour is that the professional body requires a certain number of learning events in the year to be attended – and there are people attending only in order to get their tick in the relevant box. They have no interest in learning....